Daylong battle in downtown Baghdad

Marc Santora, New York Times

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Photo: KHALID MOHAMMED

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U.S. military Apache helicopters fly as smoke rises over Baghdad's Haifa Street area, Iraq, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007. Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. troops battled gunmen in central Baghdad Tuesday, and explosions were heard in the area, police, witnesses and the U.S. military said. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed ) less

2007-01-10 04:00:00 PDT Baghdad -- More than 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops, backed by Apache attack helicopters and F-18 fighter jets, battled insurgents all day Tuesday and late into the night in downtown Baghdad in one of the most dramatic operations in the capital since the invasion nearly four years ago.

The fighting raged less than 1,000 yards from the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses both the U.S. command and the Iraqi government. It marked the latest episode for the troubled neighborhood around Haifa Street, where major campaigns have been launched repeatedly to rid the area of insurgents, only to have them infiltrate back.

Iraqi officials said at least 50 militants were killed Tuesday, but the Americans said they could not provide a count. No U.S. or Iraqi soldiers were reported killed, although some were slightly injured.

Problems in other contested areas across Baghdad came to a crisis in the fall, causing U.S. commanders to abandon a major push to regain control of the city and setting off a policy review that led to the changes President Bush will announce in a speech to the nation tonight.

The president is widely expected to call for 20,000 to 30,000 more troops in Iraq, many of whom would come to Baghdad to help quell the sectarian fighting.

The fighting on Haifa Street, a broad two-mile boulevard that cuts through the heart of the capital, began nearly a week ago as an attempt to secure the safety of residents caught in the middle of the fighting and ended with pitched battles in the street. It is a reminder of how difficult the Baghdad mission will be.

The U.S. crackdown Tuesday came on the fourth day of intense fighting in the neighborhood of tightly packed apartment buildings and 20-story high-rises that was the home of many top-ranking government officials and Baath Party loyalists while Saddam Hussein was in power. U.S. soldiers continued to patrol the area through the night, and a U.S. military spokesman said they would stay there until the situation was firmly under control. Gunfire and explosions could be heard in the neighborhood well after sunset.

A U.S. military officer familiar with the operation said that it was part of an effort to stabilize Baghdad, but was not directly linked to the president's new security plan.

Tuesday's operation, directed by elements of the Stryker Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division and Iraqi 6th Army Division, came after a series of events that, taken together, demonstrate the complexity of the fight for U.S. forces and the maze of competing interests they are trying to navigate.

It also suggests that even if the Americans attempt to deal evenhandedly with Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents, which is expected to be a central theme of President Bush's plan, their efforts could end up inadvertently benefiting one party or the other.

Shiites are clearly ascendant throughout Baghdad, systematically taking over Sunni neighborhoods, often using the intimidation of death squads to achieve their goals. But the area around Haifa Street has remained a Sunni bastion.

For the past two years, the Haifa Street area has been relatively quiet, but in recent months, as the sectarian fighting has intensified, Iraqi and U.S. military officials suspected it was being used as a base of operations for insurgents targeting the Shiite civilian population and U.S. forces.

The violence in the area started to increase markedly following the recent arrest of a senior member of the leading Shiite militia group, the Mahdi Army, who had been operating near the area, according to a U.S. military official.

The arrest, the official said, created an opening for Sunni insurgents, and they began aggressively singling out Shiites who had moved south from the Kadhimiya neighborhood.

On Saturday, 27 bodies -- all Shiites -- were dumped in the Sheikh Marouf neighborhood on Haifa Street.

When police went to investigate and collect the bodies, they were attacked, according to witnesses and government officials. The Iraqi army was called in and was also attacked, so finally the Americans were called in.

The U.S. and Iraqi forces completed their assault plans at 4 a.m. Tuesday and, before dawn, began approaching Haifa Street from different locations around the city, swiftly closing in on Talaa Square in the center of the neighborhood.

At about 6:30 a.m., they had reached the square and began arresting suspects. In all, U.S. and Iraqi officials said, they would take some 15 people into custody, including 7 Syrians.

Nearly as soon as they began making arrests, they came under heavy bombardment from small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and indirect fire, probably mortars, according to a U.S. military official. As the fighting intensified, insurgents began moving to the rooftops in order to shoot at the armored U.S. attack vehicles on the roads below.

To deal with the gunmen on the rooftops, the Americans called in Apache helicopters and fighter jets, the military official said.

The neighborhood is densely packed, making it difficult to strike targets from the air, and the fighter jets were used to "make a show of force," according to the official, in an attempt to frighten the gunmen from the rooftops.

For more than an hour on Tuesday morning, the fighter jets could be seen swooping dramatically low over the neighborhood's roofline, engines roaring, and then pulling up steeply and zooming out of sight.

Meanwhile, the Apaches attacked insurgent positions, unleashing a barrage of fire that rocked the neighborhood for hours.

Ali Housin, 56, a resident, said he saw the helicopters fire at a cemetery where insurgents were hiding, the resulting explosions blowing out the windows of his home.

Shortly after noon, the aerial assault had largely ended, but scattered clashes continued and could be heard late into the night.

Sunni organizations and politicians condemned the crackdown. Sunni legislator Khalaf al-Alayan, on Al-Jazeera television, described the fighting on Haifa Street as a way to "clean Baghdad of the remaining Sunni elements."

U.S. officials insisted that the information they had on the insurgents in the area was very detailed and that they had been careful to try to ensure that they were not being used as pawns by the Shiite-dominated government, stressing that in recent days they have conducted aggressive raids in Shiite neighborhoods.

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